People

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez Education Reporter

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez is an education reporter for KPCC. He's been a reporter at the station since 2000.

After college, in the mid-1990s, Guzman-Lopez began reporting freelance arts and culture stories, mostly about the red-hot rock en español scene, to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, and the Tijuana newspaper La Tarde. He got his first public radio job at KPBS-FM in San Diego in 1996 as a news talk show producer. He freelanced radio features to Latino USA, Marketplace and other national shows. At KPBS he hosted and produced a daily, Gen-X arts and culture show called "The Lounge" which featured in-studio performances by Howard Jones and Sean Lennon with the band Cibo Matto.

Guzman-Lopez's reporting at KPCC has included the South Gate city hall corruption scandal; the L.A. mayoral campaigns of James Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa; the SB1070 protests in Phoenix, the 2007 May Day melee; and coverage of L.A. Unified Superintendents Roy Romer, David Brewer, Ramon Cortines, and John Deasy.

Guzman-Lopez was born in Mexico City and grew up in Tijuana and San Diego.He now lives in Long Beach with his wife and two kids and is always open to hear traffic tips for the 110, 710, or the 5 freeways to downtown L.A.

Los Angeles city officials have received complaints that dispensaries have opened up within a few feet of public schools. That would be illegal if the L.A. City Council approves new restrictions to regulate the city’s ballooning number of medical marijuana dispensaries.

An annual survey released today by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing gives high marks to beginning teachers who’ve entered the profession through fast-track alternative certification programs.

The federal government says its economic stimulus package from earlier this year saved or created more than 600,000 jobs. A small portion of those funds went to arts organizations, including some in the Southland that used the money to save jobs.

The Day of the Dead, the Latin American observance that takes place Monday, hasn’t displaced Halloween in the U.S. However, a scholar argues in a new book that the observance is becoming this country’s newest holiday.

Dozens of long-time substitute teachers protested outside Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters Tuesday. They're angry about a deal struck a few months ago between teachers union leaders and district administrators that gives priority for substitute teaching jobs to about 2,000 beginning teachers the district had laid off.

About 2,000 California State University Fullerton professors are taking unpaid days off three days this week, starting Tuesday. Severe budget cuts at all Cal State campuses are forcing all employees to take furlough days. Most other campuses are spreading out or staggering furlough days.

Several hundred Los Angeles Unified School District administrators and other employees worked the phones for a day Monday and visited door-to-door in search of truants and dropouts. Their aim was to persuade those young people back into classrooms.

The CSU system began accepting applications online this month for fall admission next year. University administrators say it’s been like opening a floodgate. Since October 1st, Cal State received more than 100,000 applications for roughly 90,000 openings in the fall of next year. That’s about twice as many applications as it got in the same period last year.

A law firm hired by the the union that represents Los Angeles Unified School District teachers advised the union to file suit to a policy that would allow outside groups to take over governance of more than 200 school district campuses.

At a boisterous campus rally on Wednesday, California Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico called on CSU Dominguez Hills President Mildred Garcia to end a plan that could lead to the elimination of academic programs and majors if the campus undergoes state budget cuts next year.